Wanda's Apartment

The Time Patrol universe is vast. Let us focus on a detail. Wanda Tamberly's Stanford apartment is her temporary student accommodation and does not remain her place of residence for the rest of the series. We see it again only in a flashback to the conversation where Manse Everard had explained about the Time Patrol. In "The Year Of The Ransom":

"...she asked quietly, 'How about telling me the whole truth?'
"'An outline of it,' he agreed. 'That alone will take a couple of hours.'
"- In the end she sat wide-eyed on the sofa..." (Time Patrol, p. 717)

In The Shield Of Time, the chapter headed 1987 A.D. on pp. 26-33 recounts some of the intervening conversation. Wanda asks all the right questions about time travel like:

"'Where does the energy come from?'" (The Shield Of Time, p. 27)

Later, when she is a Patrol member:

"She examined her mount. About four-tenths charge on the cells, which used a principle she didn't even begin to understand and which made nuclear fission look like a water-clock."
-SM Stirling, "A Stitch In Time" IN Multiverse, p. 73)

So she is no wiser, at least about the technology.

Manse says:

"'...it is terrifying. It could turn out that you and I never had this talk today, that we and our whole world never were, not even a dream in somebody's sleep. It's harder to imagine and harder to take than the idea of personal annihilation when we die.'" (p. 31)

But they have had this talk today. There can be another, subsequent, timeline in which they have never existed but this is not that timeline. In this timeline, they can live out the rest of their lives remembering this conversation.

I suppose that there is some difference between being dead and never having been born but, when we are dead, we will not know about that either.

Post-Arabic Numerals

Time Patrol agents speak Temporal and use post-Arabic numerals for the time settings on their timecycles. A Conquistador who steals a timecycle is intelligent enough to learn these numerals in minutes. How would they differ from and improve on Arabic numerals?

Relevant to recent discussion on this blog, the Conquistador, Castelar, thinks that he:

"...can go to my Lord when he walked this earth and fall on my knees -" (Time Patrol, p. 690)

Even if Christ is as imagined by Castelar, would he approve of conquests and crusades? More fundamentally, Castelar has no conception that the historical Jesus might differ significantly from the Christ of his faith. This is not put to the test because the Patrol apprehends Castelar before he is able to wreak much havoc with the timecycle.

Acceptance Of Time Travel

We saw here that Pummairam and Keith Denison found it easier than most to accept time travel. Here is a third example. In "The Year Of The Ransom":

"Remarkable how swiftly [Castelar] grasped the idea." (Time Patrol, p. 688)

However, there are several explanations for his acceptance:

(i) "Educated men of the sixteenth century believed in miracles; it was Christian, Jewish, and Muslim dogma." (p. 689)

(ii) "They also lived in a world of revolutionary new discoveries, inventions, ideas." (ibid.)

(Thus, tradition and modernity temporarily reinforce rather than contradict each other.)

(iii) "The Spanish, especially, were steeped in tales of chivalry and enchantment - " (ibid.)

(So their fiction also helped.)

(iv) "No scientist had told Castelar that travel into the past was physically impossible..." (ibid.)

(v) "...no philosopher had listed the reason why it was logically absurd. He met the simple fact." (ibid.)

So why are we told that:

"The Patrol got few recruits from before the First Industrial Revolution, and very few from prescientific societies..." (The Shield Of Time, p. 300)?

The reason given here is:

"A person who hadn't been raised in that style of thinking was seldom able to assimilate the concepts." (ibid.)

"...that style of thinking..." means the scientific world-view which is necessary to understand the entire context of the Patrol and its technology. Babylonians at the Time Patrol Academy have to be given "...a battle-of-the-gods routine." (Time Patrol, p. 14)

1533 And 1885

Sometimes in Poul Anderson's texts, the difficulty of discussing time travel paradoxes becomes more evident. In London 1885, two Patrolmen, Everard and Vasquez, discuss a situation in Peru 1533 that Vasquez has just come from. A friar, secretly a Patrolman, and a cavalier had disappeared from inside the locked and guarded treasury where the Inca Atahualpa's ransom was being stored. Vasquez says:

"'When I left, the general idea was that sorcerers had been at work. Hysteria was building rapidly. It could have hideous consequences.'
"'Which are not in the history we learned,' Everard growled. 'How critical is that exact piece of space-time?'
"'The Conquest as a whole, certainly vital, a key part of world events. This one episode - who knows? We have not ceased to exist, in spite of being uptime of it.'
"'Which doesn't mean that we can't cease,' said Everard roughly. We can never have been, ourselves and the whole world that begot us. It's a perishing more absolute than death.'" (Time Patrol, p. 679)

If events in 1533 had altered subsequent history so that there was no Victorian London with a Time Patrol office in 1885, then Vasquez, far from ceasing to exist, would simply have arrived in a different version of 1885.

Perishing or ceasing to exist is not the same as never having been. On the contrary, anything that perishes or ceases has been. It makes no sense for Everard and Vasquez to fear that events in 1533 after Vasquez's departure from that year are going to cause them to cease to exist in 1885. Events in 1533 are not going to happen. They have already happened, back in 1533. And they did not prevent the existence of a Victorian London with a Time Patrol office in 1885. If they had done, then Everard and Vasquez would not have been there to talk about it.

Of course, it is conceivable that an undesirable timeline did diverge from 1533 but Everard and Vasquez are not in such a timeline and cannot be affected by the alternative course of events in such a timeline. There may be a point of view according to which the undesirable timeline is "present" whereas the Time Patrol timeline is "past" but that is not Everard's or Vasquez's point of view so they do not have to worry about it.

Temporal

"Temporal, the artificial language with which Patrolmen from all ages could communicate without being understood by strangers, was a miracle of logically organized expressiveness." (Time Patrol, p. 12)

Yet later, Merau Varagan, an enemy of the Patrol:

"...used fluent Temporal, the common speech of the Time Patrol and many civilian travelers..." (p. 657) (my emphasis)

Between p. 12 and p. 657, has the narrative moved to a different timeline where knowledge of Temporal has not been restricted to the Patrol?

We also learn that Temporal has tenses appropriate to time travel and variable reality. I would like to learn such tenses. Discussion of time travel paradoxes in English leads to confusion. Thus, World War II is in our past in our timeline (timeline 1). If we moved to the 2015 of timeline 2 where World War II never happened, then World War II would not be in our past in that timeline. But timeline 1, including its World War II, would be in the past of a second temporal dimension at right angles to the first. Thus, there would be a past tense in which it was true to say that World War II never happened and another past tense in which it would be equally true to say that World War II did happen. This is the source of some confusion in discussing the Time Patrol series.

Anderson's Technic History refers to fictional languages: Anglic; Eriau; Planha. CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy has a Solar language and some Martian languages. Lewis' Narnians speak English since human beings entered that world from ours. Tolkien created imaginary languages, then the beings that spoke them, then those beings' histories.

First Person Present Tense

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series begins with third person narration, then introduces first person narration with the character Carl Farness except when Carl is doing field work in the fourth century when he is perceived as the Wanderer by the Goths.

"The Year Of The Ransom" begins with first person present tense narration by Wanda Tamberly. Instead of reading "...Wanda lowered the glasses," or "...I lowered the glasses," we read, "...I lower the glasses." (Time Patrol, p. 645) Sometimes the personal pronoun is omitted. Thus:

"Catch a breath, take a look around." (ibid.)

Either Wanda is recounting her actions to herself as she performs them or she is telling herself what to do, then immediately doing it. In the latter case, the verbs are not present tense indicative mood but imperative mood. Thus, the narration becomes more intricate as the series proceeds.

Wanda, on the Galapagos, thinks:

"...it was the Galapagos finches that helped Darwin understand how life works through time." (p. 644)

Thus, the text begins to prepare the reader for Wanda moving through time and working in the past.

Dodos

The previous post listed several comparable literary devices including Alice in Wonderland's rabbit hole, SM Stirling's Gate and some of Poul Anderson's routes between universes. Dodos also link these three authors.

Alice meets one (see image). Stirling's Tom Christiansen, investigating the smuggling of rare species, recognizes a caged, and just dying, dodo. Later, when he is being introduced to the alternative timeline:

"'Dodos?' [Tom] murmured. 'And tigers and bears, oh my!'"
-SM Stirling, Conquistador (New York, 2004), p. 248.

When Poul Anderson's Wanda Tamberly realizes that she can join the Time Patrol and study live prehistoric animals, she thinks:

"Mammoths and cave bears and dodos, oh my!"
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 735.

We strive for literary unity between the universes!

Causal Loops And Temporal Vortices

When Manson Everard of the Time Patrol investigates the disappearance, in Peru, 1533, of Patrol Specialist Stephen Tamberly, Tamberly's wife, Helen, asks:

"'There'll be a report in the files. Can't you go at once and read it? Or, or skip ahead in time and ask your future self? Why must we go through this?'"
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 670.

We know the answer. If Everard's future self tells him that he failed, then how can Everard try to succeed? Indeed, he would then be trying to change events whereas the Patrol is meant to preserve them - although this is what Everard did in "Brave To Be A King," unless the Patrol instructed its Records Department to lie by saying that Keith Denison never returned from ancient Persia?

Everard replies in part:

"'Causal loops can too easily turn into temporal vortices.'" (p. 671)

Here the concept of a "vortex" is used again without explanation. If a causal loop is the circular causality paradox and if a vortex is the causality violation paradox, then how can the former become the latter? The difference is between me causing my parents to meet and me preventing them from meeting.

However, Everard does elucidate:

"'Just think how our actions would be influenced by what we believed was foreknowledge.'" (ibid.)

If we believe that we will succeed and therefore do not try hard enough, then we will fail. Thus, an attempt to benefit from a causal loop might instead cause a causality violation.

Exaltation

Wanda Tamberly asks Manson Everard why the Exaltationists try to change history. He replies:

"'...to abort the whole future. Make themselves overlords...'"
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 718.

But he adds:

"'Not that I think they could long have stayed in charge. Selfishness like that generally turns on itself. Battles through time, a chaos of changes - I wonder how much flux the space-time fabric could survive...How does it feel knowing you may have saved the universe?'" (pp. 718-719)

This and the concluding chapter of The Shield Of Time, "1990 A.D.," are the only indications that the Time Patrol's activities may have a cosmic significance. But why should the space-time fabric not survive flux? Larry Niven argues in "The Theory and Practice of Time Travel," that, in a scenario where time travel is possible and where the past can be changed, there will be no time travel because some time traveler will prevent it. But there is no reason why the universe should not survive all the changes made by time travelers until the change that prevents time travel. Each timeline is complete in itself and has the same mass-energy as any other.

When Everard arrests the last Exaltationist, Raor, he asks her what they would have done with the universe. She confirms his prediction of battles through time but adds that this would be a deliberate policy:

"'We would have made it what we chose, and unmade and remade it, and stormed the stars as we warred for possession, with an entire reality the funeral pyre of each who fell and entire histories the funeral games, until the last god reigned alone.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 118.

Raor envisages neither Anderson's space-time destroyed by flux nor Niven's timeline without time travel but a new history ruled by a single Exaltationist.

People From The Future III

In Poul Anderson's Guardians Of Time, Everard's first three companions are his contemporaries but the fourth is Piet Van Sarawak from twenty fourth century Venus, of Dutch-Indonesian descent. Anderson tells us nothing about this version of Venus although SM Stirling has contributed several colorful details this very year.

Julio Vasquez, "...almost pure native Andean, though born in the twenty-second century..." (Time Patrol, p. 677), looks out of place in London, 1885. However:

"...this neighborhood had doubtless grown somewhat accustomed to exotic visitors. Not only was London the center of a planet-wide Empire, York Place divided Baker Street." (ibid.)

Again, we get the sense of the future being born in the past:

a reference to Earth as a planet;
the British Empire will not last but will have historical consequences;
London will remain a financial center;
another author will tell us of irregular visitors to Baker St.

It is all happening here and now - or there and then.

Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks IV

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

Epsilon Korten, the director of Jerusalem Base extrapolates:

"'If Tyre is destroyed, Europe may take decades to show any major effects, the rest of the world centuries - millennia, in the Americas or Australia. But it will be an immediate catastrophe for Solomon's kingdom. Lacking Hiram's support and the prestige it confers, he probably can't hold his tribes together long; and without Tyre at their backs, the Philistines won't be slow to seek revenge. Judaism, Yahwistic monotheism, is weak and frail, still half pagan. My extrapolation is that it won't survive either. Yahweh will sink to being one more character in a crude and mutable pantheon.'" (p. 308)

Earlier, Everard had reflected that:

"Yahweh would not really be the sole Lord of the Jews until the Babylonian Captivity forced them to it, as a means of preserving an identity that ten of their tribes had already lost." (p. 249)

(Anderson's "The House of Sorrows" presents a timeline in which the Jews did not return from Babylon.) Everard goes on to speculate that "...foreign alliance and domestic religious tolerance...might well have saved the country from its eventual destruction." (ibid.)

- but, of course, the Patrol must protect what did happen which, in this case, is prophetic intolerance of Phoenician paganism. So how would the Patrol have been able to minimize the effects on Solomon's kingdom of the destruction of Tyre? It seems that they would have had to:

help Solomon to maintain his tribal confederation;
hold off the Philistines;
maintain the drive towards monotheism;
resist a return to polytheism;
do all this without coming to the attention of historians.

This sounds (a) difficult and (b) not enough to restore the exact history that would have occurred without the destruction of Tyre. Would the Danellians and the Patrol be content, if necessary, with an altered timeline that was broadly similar to the original? Thus, for example, an advance to monotheism even if not exactly along the lines of post-Exilic Judaism and early Christianity?

When Korten spells out the extent of the extrapolated catastrophe, Everard irritates him by in turn spelling out, purely for the benefit of the reader, that Judaism influenced philosophy as well as Greek and Roman events and that, without it, there would be no Christianity or Western or Byzantine civilizations. This happens a few times in the series. The reader must be informed so, for example, Everard and Vasquez irritate Helen Tamberly by discussing the Spanish Conquest instead of getting straight to how they might find her missing husband.

The Year Of The Ransom: Loose Ends

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

(i) I noted earlier that Wanda Tamberly thought that the conquistador, Luis Castelar, was both strong and smart and that Stephen Tamberly thought that he was at least strong but I had missed this from Stephen:

"Lord, this is a bright fellow! A genius, perhaps, in his fashion...another remark once showed a surprisingly sophisticated view of Islam." (p. 687)

(I would have been interested to read that earlier remark.)

So two Tamberlys agree on Luis' intellectual acumen.

(ii) I have found a passage that I was looking for earlier. This is Wanda reflecting on what she has learned from Luis about his beliefs and plans:

"...he hews to the Trinity and the warlike saints. He'll succeed, dedicating his victories to them, and become greater than the Holy Roman Emperor; or he'll die in the attempt and go to Paradise, all sins forgiven because what he did was in the cause of Christendom. Catholic Christendom." (p. 700)

So - fight and kill his way to becoming a global Emperor while at the same time having all his sins forgiven! (I feel safer with my doubts and guilt.)

(iii) When Wanda realizes that Everard must be with the "Time Guard" and wonders where she put his card, she thinks:

"Where'd I put that bit of cardboard? Tonight the universe is balanced on it." (p. 708)

And when she has put Everard on Luis' trail, he asks:

"'How does it feel knowing you may have saved the universe?'" (p. 719)

"...saved the universe..." sounds maybe a bit juvenile? Like Star Trek? "The Year Of The Ransom" was written, I think successfully, as a short juvenile novel. Everard's reason for using such cosmic language is as follows. He thinks that, unrestrained by the Time Patrol, the Exaltationists will fight among themselves through time:

"'Selfishness like that generally turns on itself. Battles through time, a chaos of changes - I wonder how much flux the space-time fabric could survive.'" (p. 718)

In a memorable passage in the next volume, Raor confirms:

"'We would have made [the universe] what we chose, and unmade and remade it, and stormed the stars as we fought for possession, with an entire reality the funeral pyre of each who fell and entire histories the funeral games, until the last god reigned alone.'"
-The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 118.

Not only would their selfishness turn on itself but they would plan for that to happen. But, just as three dimensional space survives flux along the temporal dimension, I would expect space-time to survive flux along what would have to be a second temporal dimension. However many timelines the Exaltationists generated, each such timeline would, in and of itself, be just as much a solid space-time continuum as any other (I think).

(iv) It is ironic that Luis makes himself physically vulnerable to Wanda when he dedicates himself to his cause. He draws his sword not to attack but to kneel, invert the sword into a cross and emotionally address both God and the Mother of God. That is when, to bring us all back down to Earth, Wanda is able to hit him on the head with the vacuum cleaner.

(v) Unusually even for the Time Patrol series, two historical mysteries are incorporated into and explained by the narrative of "The Year Of The Ransom": the similarity of Valdivia ware to Jomon pottery and reports of visions above the siege of Cuzco. Time Patrol members are responsible for both of these. Similarly, in "Death And The Knight," a Patrolman warns a friend in the Knights Templar which is why the Templar fleet escapes when the Order is arrested. It makes sense that, in a time travel scenario, such events would happen.

The Good That Men Do

Pummairam, Luis Castelar and Wanda Tamberly all learn about time travel. Pum and Wanda are recruited by the Time Patrol whereas Luis' values are too different. Although he fails utterly in his intended new Crusade with the stolen timecycle, he does some good from the Patrol's point of view by:

escaping from the Exaltationists;
kidnapping Stephen Tamberly;
kidnapping Wanda Tamberly.

By interrogating Stephen, he learns that they had been held by Exaltatonists in Machu Picchu. By conversing with Wanda, he relays that information to her. She informs the Patrol who are therefore able to attack the Exaltationists at Machu Picchu immediately after Luis' escape. Unfortunately, Luis had wounded but not killed Merau Varagan so that two of Varagan's men were in the process of taking him elsewhere/when for medical care. Raor also escaped despite having been stunned by Luis.

Luis is convinced that he will go straight to Heaven if he dies fighting for Christendom. It amazes me that so many people are convinced that:

there is a hereafter;
they know what it is like;
they will be OK in it;
others will not.

And yet they differ: Evangelicals; Catholics; Muslims; some Hindus etc. Islam and Christianity, Jihad and Crusade, influenced each other. What Luis believed about his death in battle, we unfortunately hear from some people who commit suicide and mass murder now.

My view is:

a hereafter is unlikely;
if there is one, it is unknown till we get there;
it needs to be an opportunity for continued growth, not a good or bad final destination.

The Complete Time Patrol Series

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, with its appropriately long publishing history from 1955 to 1995, is complete as one omnibus collection and one long novel.

The collection of the Time Patrol stories has expanded four times and changed its title three times - although, on the third occasion, merely by losing the definite article. Each expansion has incorporated only one or two newer works. Of these, two are shorter than the original four but another four are considerably longer. Thus, the collection has more than doubled its length both in terms of the number of items included and, even more so, in terms of word count.

There have been:

The Guardians Of Time with four stories, "Time Patrol," "Brave To Be A King," "The Only Game In Town" and "Delenda Est," all originally published in The Magazine Of Science Fiction (FSF);

The Guardians Of Time with five stories, incorporating "Gibraltar Falls," which had subsequently been published in FSF;

Annals Of The Time Patrol with seven stories, incorporating "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" and "The Sorrow Of Odin The Goth," which had subsequently been published together as Time Patrolman;

The Time Patrol with nine stories, incorporating "The Year Of The Ransom," which had subsequently been published as a single volume, and the new "Star Of The Sea";

Time Patrol with ten stories, incorporating "Death And The Knight," which had subsequently been published in an anthology of original short stories about the Knights Templar.

Thus, The Guardians Of Time remains the complete FSF Time Patrol collection.

The novel, The Shield Of Time, is divided into six Parts. The odd numbered Parts are one brief prelude and two brief interludes whereas the even numbered Parts could each have been published as a distinct work although they also contain flashback chapters connecting them into a single narrative. Thus, the entire series has thirteen installments.

How the series needs to be tidied up:

"Death And The Knight" is a sequel to The Shield Of Time so should in future be collected at the end of the novel, not at the end of the omnibus collection;

"The Year Of The Ransom" is a prequel to "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks," which is the direct prequel to The Shield Of Time, so "Ivory..." should be moved to the end of the collection after "The Year Of The Ransom," which was placed at the end, I think, in the mistaken belief that it was the direct prequel to The Shield...;

"Gibraltar Falls" was placed in the middle of The Guardians Of Time so that "Delenda Est" would remain the climax of that volume but I think that, in the omnibus collection, "Gibraltar Falls" belongs after "Delenda Est" because its text reflects the passage of time between the publication of the original tetralogy and this new addition to the series.

22 and 23 May 1987

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

Luis Catelar's verdict on what he sees of the twentieth century:

an electrically lit city seen from above at night is "'...a blaze of glory...'" (pp. 699-700), like the dwelling place of saints or "'...the gates of Heaven...'" (p. 707);
but thousands of rushing, roaring, demonic engines are more like Hell;
language and ways are foreign;
heresy and shamelessness are rampant;
Wanda is an infidel defying God's laws for women!

We have learned to comprehend that tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis (times change and we change with them), whereas Luis' period preceded that understanding. Talking to him, Wanda comes to understand him:

unyielding but polite;
killer, racist, fanatic;
"a man of his word, fearless, ready to die for king or comrade" (p. 706);
humorless and romantic;
good by his own standards, like a medieval warrior whom Wanda is yet to meet.

(If there is any deity that judges us after death, then he is going to have to judge our actions by a whole lot of historically differing standards.)

Wanda had to convince him that the vacuum cleaner was not a gun and, indeed, she does wield it as a weapon, stunning Luis to gain a moment in which to phone Everard. In The Shield Of Time, Everard, grabbing a stolen Time Patrol communicator from an Exaltationist, has only a moment in which to request help. He manages:

"'Unattached Everard. Come immediately. Combat.'"
- Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 113.

Similarly, Wanda, speaking into Everard's answering machine, has time for:

"'Wanda Tamberly. Palo Alto. Time traveler...Friday night before Memorial Day. Help!'" (p. 713)

The answering machine would record time and date so five of her words are unnecessary. In both cases, the short message is enough. Time traveling help arrives immediately.

And in the next section, headed "23 May 1987," we are back to third person narration from Everard's point of view with Wanda for the first time described as seen by somebody else. A first task is to tidy the apartment so that the earlier Wanda returning on Monday evening will not see any signs either of occupancy or of conflict. The present Wanda remembers that she did not notice anything untoward.

For over ten years, I lived in Lancaster but commuted once or twice weekly to work in Merseyside, spending three or four nights in a cheap one-room apartment. Perhaps two or three times, I had reason to spend part of a weekend there. For all the rest of that time, the apartment is empty at weekends unless my future self finds a way to time travel to it.

22 May 1987

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

So far, up to p. 713 (this will change), the rule in "The Year Of The Ransom" is that, when Wanda Tamberly is on stage, she narrates but otherwise the narration is in the third person whether the viewpoint character is Castelar, Stephen Tamberly or Manson Everard.

In the section headed "22 May 1987", pp. 698-713, Wanda is Castelar's prisoner. Her Uncle Stephen had thought that a cavalier must be fitter than an Olympian champion. Wanda goes further:

"...he's a superman, or pretty close to it. Natural selection, back in his day. If you weren't physically tough, you didn't live to have kids. And a peasant could be stupid, might even do better if he was, but not a military officer who didn't have a Pentagon to plan his moves for him." (p. 699)

So Wanda deduces that Castelar is not only strong but also astute. And, like HG Wells' Time Traveler reflecting on the Morlocks and Eloi, she automatically applies a Darwinian analysis unknown to all previous ages.

Castelar makes telling observations about the contents of Wanda's apartment:

he is surprised that she has so many books - "'You cannot be a cleric...'" (p. 704);
but they are poorly bound - paperbacks;
magazine covers are garish;
he admires the gas range but comments on the vacuum cleaner, "'Give me a charwoman...She doesn't howl like a mad wolf.'" (p. 705)

Because of the time travel involved, it is important to be clear about when they are:

after Everard interviewed Wanda on 30 October 1986;
before Castelar kidnapped Wanda on 10 September 1987;
while the Wanda of May 1987 is visiting family for the weekend and will not return to this apartment until Monday evening.

Back in October, Wanda had wondered whether Uncle Steve was with the CIA. We could almost say TIA, Temporal Intelligence Agency. She has learned from Castelar that there is a guarda del tiempo and that Stephen works for that. She deduces that Everard must work for it as well and that determines her next move.

Escape From 2930 BC

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

This is just one strand in "The Year Of The Ransom."

(i) Helen Tamberly tells Manson Everard that, while holidaying in archaic Japan, her husband Stephen and she have taken up handicrafts, including pottery.

(ii) A time criminal kidnaps Stephen Tamberly and abandons him in tropical America in 2937 BC.

(iii) Tamberly follows a river to the coast, seeking primitive but hospitable settlements where his skills should make him important.

(iv) In 2930 BC, a time traveler from the Universarium of Halla arrives on the coast to investigate the archaeological mystery of the Valdivia ware which almost exactly duplicates the contemporaneous Jomon pottery of archaic Japan...

(v) The explorer meets the tall, pale Vesselmaker and they converse in Temporal. Thus is Tamberly rescued.

There is a similar situation at the end of "The Only Game In Town." The North American potlatch tribes have been taught by Mongols and a Confucian scholar who never returned to China because Manson Everard of the Time Patrol killed their horses and burned their ships.

When Castelar abandons Tamberly in 2937 BC, this highlights a curious feature of time travel. In fact, Castelar never returns for Tamberly but several other scenarios were possible. Let us substitute "captor" and "captive" for Castelar and Tamberly:

captor leaves captive in 2937 BC, travels to the twentieth century, lives for three decades in that century and then returns to check whether captive is still alive in 2907 BC;
as above except that captive returns to retrieve captor a fraction of a second after leaving him in 2937 BC;
any other difference between length of time spent by captor in the twentieth century and time endured by captive BC.

Thus, as long as the captor lives, he can regard the captive as "on ice" back in the past and can decide whether to retrieve him with zero time endured by the captive or to retrieve him with some time endured by the captive or not to retrieve him. That is an odd feature of time travel which would not be paralleled if, for example, the captor had been deposited on another planet.

Some Interesting Observations

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

Time Patrolman Stephen Tamberly's thoughts and reflections in 2937 BC include the following -

(i) Time travelers often underestimate people of past eras. That is plausible.

(ii) "Any cavalier spent his whole life in such physical activity that an Olympic champion would be flabby by comparison." (p. 686) What a thought!

(iii) A conquistador encountering time travel easily accepts it. He believes in miracles, knows of  "...revolutionary new discoveries, inventions, ideas" (p. 689) and is steeped in tales of enchantment. No scientist (or philosopher) has said that time travel is physically (or logically) impossible.

(iv) Timecycle controls use post-Arabic numerals but these are easily learned.

(v) Flying the timecycle by antigravity requires more skill than operating the spatiotemporal controls.

I would not have thought of any of these points but they all make sense.

The Exaltationist Saga IV

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

Manson Everard of the Time Patrol learns about Wanda Tamberly by interviewing Helen Tamberly in 1885. Castelar of the Conquistadors learns about Wanda by interrogating Stephen Tamberly in 2937 BC.

Everard interviews Wanda in 1986, seeking clues about her Uncle Stephen's disappearance. Castelar kidnaps Wanda in 1987 so that she can guide him to a twentieth century armory.

The Tamberlys have two problems:

Stephen is stranded in 2937 BC;
Wanda is Castelar's prisoner, first in 1435, then in 1987.

In some time travel stories, like "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks," time travelers who have visited another period remain in that period for the duration of the narrative whereas, in a story like "The Year Of The Ransom," they move around a lot. Poul Anderson, beginning with more straightforward short stories in the 1950's, wrote longer and more complicated time travel plots in the '80's and '90's.

The Exaltationist Saga III

(The Ian M Banks novel has style but I am not yet sure about its substance.)

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

As noted in the previous post, the first six pages of "The Year Of The Ransom" are headed "10 September 1987" and narrated by Wanda Tamberly. The next eight pages are headed "3 June 1533 [Julian calender]" and narrated in the third person from the point of view of the Conquistador Castelar who is in conversation with the Franciscan Esteban Tanaquil. Castelar and Tanaquil, like Wanda, are captured by someone on what we recognize as a timecycle.

Next, just over twelve pages, headed "15 April 1610", are narrated in the third person from the point of view of Stephen Tamberly, Time Patrolman, whose alias in 1533 had been Esteban Tanaquil. Captured by about thirty Exaltationists based in the deserted Machu Picchu, Tamberly, uncle of Wanda, is interrogated by Merau Varagan. If we read the series in the order of events as experienced by the characters, which is not the order presented in Time Patrol, then this is our first knowledge of Varagan. Knowing that Machu Picchu is unvisited until 1911, the Exaltationists can safely hide there - although they allow themselves to be seen arriving and departing by the locals in order to keep them away.

Castelar, escaping, stabs Varagan but "...wasted no time finishing him." (p. 666) "...Ransom" is carefully written as a prequel to the first published account of the Exaltationists so Varagan cannot be killed here although it would have saved a lot of trouble if he were. Similarly, Castelar stuns Raor. I do not think that Anderson would have known yet that she would later become the villainess of the last Exaltationist story.

About two thirds of p. 667, headed "May 2937 A.D.", are still Tamberly pov but now he and Castelar are alone, having stolen one of the Exaltationists' timecycles.

The next section, fourteen pages preceded by two lines at the end of p. 667, is headed "3 November 1885". At last, we are back on familiar territory. Not only is our point of view character Manson Everard but he sets of in a hansom cab from Dalhousie and Roberts, Importers, the Time Patrol London base, which he previously visited in 1894 on p. 21. We were told in that first story that the Time Patrol's Western milieu HQ for 1850-2000 is in London, 1890-1910. I had inferred that Dalhousie and Roberts was the HQ but here we see it existing before 1890 and referred to only as "...the Time Patrol's London base in this milieu..." (pp. 667-668).

Everard interviews Helen Tamberly about her missing husband and learns of a"'...favorite niece...'" (p. 676). The Tamberlys live on "...York Place [which] divided Baker Street." (p. 677) Everard meets two famous residents of Baker St in 1894.

On pp. 682-685, headed "30 October 1986", Wanda, again the first person narrator, is interviewed by "Mr Everard..." (p. 682) about her missing Uncle Steve. She mentions:

"'I've got a summer job lined up. Tourist guide in the Galapagos Islands.'" (p. 684)

- which is where we met her on 10 September 1987. After Wanda and Everard, we are back, for ten pages, with Castelar and Stephen Tamberly in 2937 B.C., and that is as far as I will take us at present. I summarize all this to demonstrate how skillfully Anderson alternates between points of view and dates in later Time Patrol stories.